


Cold In The Sun

by PanBoleyn



Series: Three Is More Than Just Company [8]
Category: Inception (2010)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-29
Updated: 2010-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:57:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lines blur between reality and dreams as Ariadne races against time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold In The Sun

Cold in the sun  
My feet on the ground  
A pale windless city  
A numbness for sound

I'll wait, back here  
Or will you notice  
A moment in time  
A photograph lost here  
Since you were mine  
I'll wait back here  
Or should I start pushing my way back  
Yeah...  
Should I start pushing my way back? – Numbness For Sound, Howie Day

 _Arthur sits alone in his tiny apartment, trying not to think. It's been six months since everything he was afraid of happened. It was gradual, he remembers now, unable to push his mind into peaceful blankness. It happened so slowly, the way Eames and Ariadne started ignoring him in favor of each other, the way he was more and more just their point man and not their lover._

 _Of course, he's still technically their point man. He still works with them because he doesn't trust anyone else not to get them killed. And even if they don't love him anymore, he'll always be in love with them – he's tried not to be and failed miserably – so he has to do what he can. It's stupid, and Ashley yells at him all the time, saying he can join her and Daniel's team whenever he likes. He does work with them, because it dulls the ache a little to be around people who care, even if they're just friends to him, but he can't..._

 _He lives in Philly again, it seemed to fit that since he's miserable he might as well go back to the place where he was miserable as a kid. And it's across the country from San Francisco, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. On days like this, when Ariadne's called him to say that there's another job and is he available, it doesn't. On days like this he sits at his kitchen counter and wonders how he got here._

~ ~ ~

Ariadne shows up at Cobb's door with an icy look on her face. She's so rigid that she doesn't even blink in surprise to see Saito at the former extractor's kitchen table.

“Ariadne, what's wrong?” Cobb asks, chilled by the young woman's behavior.

“They're gone,” she says, voice flat. “And I have to find them.”

~ ~ ~

 **“Who are they?” the architect asks. “Because those were not normal projections.”**

 **“None of your fucking business,” Eames says roughly, shoving past the smaller man and heading out into the Cairo sunlight. God, he's turning into Cobb, he thinks, remembering how, in the dream, he'd turned to see Ariadne sitting on a rail, Arthur leaning against it next to her. They were looking at him, so much like the real ones, as though inviting him to join them.**

 **But he can't. Well, not unless he wants to commit suicide to do it, and he thinks with a certain black humor that if there is an afterlife, they'd be furious at him for that when he joins them there. Because they wouldn't want him to do that.**

~ ~ ~

“I assume you are talking about Mr. Eames and Mr. Arthur, Miss Ariadne?” Saito asks from his place at the table. Under other circumstances Ariadne would roll her eyes or grin at Saito's formality, but not right now. Right now she is too busy trying to keep her cool, because if she lets herself feel anything she'll fall apart.

They'd gone out shopping, for Christ's sake. Or rather, Arthur had gone to buy a new suit and Eames had gone along to harass him. Ariadne would have been there too, but she'd gotten a call from her cousin, who was getting married in a few months. Ariadne was maid of honor, and easily the most level-headed of the bridal party, so Jackie called her whenever she needed advice on wedding plans.

Of all the reasons not to be with them... Logically, Ariadne knows that it's a good thing she wasn't with them. It means she can find them, she won't stop until she does. But she can't help but feel like she should be there with them, like she's failed them by not being there.

She tells herself she hasn't failed them yet. She'll only fail them if she doesn't find them.

~ ~ ~

 _“Why don't you quit this dreamshare thing entirely?” Ianto asks him. “We can always use another hand in Cardiff. Jack's met you, he likes you well enough and I'm sure he wouldn't say no if you signed on.”_

 _Arthur can't help but laugh a little. Jack Harkness had hit on him the first and only time he'd met the man; Ianto's “likes you well enough” was an odd way of putting that conversation. But since Ianto is currently seeing Harkness, he doesn't comment on that. Instead he shakes his head, looking off to the side._

 _“I'm thinking about it,” he says, and shocks himself by how true that is. The fact is, as long as he's in the business he'll never be able to cut all ties to Ariadne and Eames, because they keep hiring him for jobs. Even if he tells them not to call again, even if he never works with them intentionally again, he'll always be worried that they'll be on the next job he's offered._

 _But dreaming's the only passion he has left. None of the other things he's worked on, not even the computer skills that first interested DESI, have been as much a part of him as dreamshare. He loves it, and he's not sure he can stop. But if he does, he knows he'll accept Ianto's offer. Because Cardiff is even further away than Philadelphia. He can vanish entirely if he signs on with Torchwood._

 _If he's ever ready for a fresh start, that's what he wants. He's just not sure that he'll reach that point. Right now he's not ready, and he tells Ianto that. “But I'll keep it in mind, Ianto, and if I ever want out, you're the first person I'll call.”_

~ ~ ~

 **It was the first time they'd worked separately in ages; Eames owed an old friend a favor and said friend needed only a forger for the job. Arthur and Ari took on another job while he was gone, and it wasn't until his job was finished that he heard the trouble it had caused. The entire team his lovers had joined had death marks on their heads now, and they were on the run.**

 **He found them in a shitty hostel in Amsterdam, Ariadne already dead with one shot to the head, and Arthur's eyes glazing over, his breath coming in short pants. All Eames could do was hold his hand as he died, take the bodies back to be buried, and try to carry on alone. Oh, and find the fuckers who did this and kill them slowly and painfully.**

 **He did that, he tortured the bastards until they begged him to kill them, and he did, but not out of mercy. He did it because they didn't deserve to keep breathing. And now there's Ari and Arthur again, in his dreams, just like Mal used to be in Cobb's. He's finally lost his mind, and he can't bring himself to care. Because at least he can see them again.**

~ ~ ~

It was their extractor. Usually, Arthur pulls double-duty as both point and extractor, but this job had been complicated enough that they'd thought it best to hire someone. Only they didn't know that Tom Bullen was a backstabbing asshole who gave their names to the mark. Cobb insists on going with her, saying something about her having never been in this position before. After his reckless disregard for them all on the Fischer job, this is rather laughable, but having backup's not a bad idea so she agrees.

He seems to think she's still an innocent, and maybe he's right. She's never done any of this in real life before, but the boys trained her in every possibility, Arthur with the Marine Corps' deadly precision and Eames with the ruthless competence all the joking masked. So she knows how to do this. The only question is if she can handle it in real life. She wasn't sure she could before, but now – with the thought of waking up alone for the rest of her life, of never looking into amused gray eyes or steady brown ones again – she can do anything to make sure that never happens.

They've already caught Bullen, the smug bastard, and he's tied to a chair. But even despite that, he smirks at Ariadne, completely unafraid of her. He eyes Cobb suspiciously, then focuses on the girl. He must think I'm the weak point, Ari muses. She can't blame him, but he's about to find out he's wrong.

“I know you sold us out, Tom,” she says, playing nice for now. “So why don't you tell me where Arthur and Eames are? It'll be much simpler if you just tell me.”

He laughs derisively. “Really, Ariadne, if it was one of your boys I might be worried, but you? 'Fraid I can't help you, dear. He's cute enough, though,” he adds, jerking his chin in Cobb's direction. “Maybe you should take up with him and forget about those other two. It would be a lot simpler.”

Ariadne's heard before that certain kinds of rage make your skin run cold rather than hot, and she's feeling the proof of that now. She has no idea what her expression looks like, but from Cobb's startled expression and the way that Bullen stops smirking, she's sure it's not pleasant. She slides her hand inside the denim jacket she's wearing, feeling the butt of the gun holstered at her side.

Walking close to Bullen, she meets his eyes with her own, not looking away even for a second. “Tell me who took them and where they are.”

Bullen isn't cocky this time, but he's still stubborn. “No. You won't hurt me, you'll just act like you will.” He sounds just a bit uncertain but not nearly enough.

She knows – both the boys have mentioned it – that pain is an imperfect method for getting information. People lie to make the pain stop, they'll say anything to make it end if it's bad enough. But Saito has people going through Bullen's computers already, experts who are better than Ariadne could ever be – Arthur's taught her all he can but she doesn't have any natural talent for hacking so it only goes so far. They don't have time to set up an extraction or she would. As it is...

Reasons, justifications, they really don't matter when she pulls out the gun and shoots Bullen in the left kneecap. It's partly because she's just committed a greater act of violence than she ever has before in the real world, and explanations won't help her if she's caught. But really it's because it's not relevant, what she has to do to find out what she needs to know. Even the look on Cobb's face, the shock in his eyes, doesn't move her. He'd do the same if it was years ago and Mal was the one captured. He'd do it now for Saito, she suspects. He doesn't have the right to judge her.

Bullen is a lot of things, but most of all he's a coward. He knows she's serious now, and he tells her everything. He tells her where they are, and what the drug he gave their captors – a group Eames and Arthur pissed off on a job years before Ariadne ever met them – will do. Bullen knows the drug inside and out; he helped invent it and helped his partner blame it all on the grad student he was fucking at the time. So his descriptions of its effects are very detailed.

She knows what's happening to the men she loves, and she won't let them live through it any longer than she has to.

~ ~ ~

 **They're back on the next job he takes, separately this time. Ariadne's on the first level, which is a mall, browsing the shelves at a bookstore. Arthur's at the second, an airport, waiting in one of the ticket lines. They don't speak to Eames, this time they don't even acknowledge him, and he almost calls Cobb to find out if this is how it started with Mal. But he doesn't, because the last thing he needs is for Cobb to know about this. The former extractor had a habit of being preachy in the days of the government/military dreamscape program, where he'd first met the Cobbs and Arthur, and Eames doesn't want to hear it if that tendency's returned.**

 **Every job, they're there. He keeps waiting for them to turn on him, to go psycho like Mal, but maybe he's not quite as crazy as Cobb was because they never do. They're just there, usually on the sidelines watching, but there was that time where Ariadne distracted the mark for him and the time Arthur shot a few projections that were bearing down on him.**

 **Eames doesn't know what it means, but he can't fucking stand it anymore. They're there but they're really not, and the dichotomy of it is enough to make it all ten times worse. He almost wishes they would attack him, because then he'd know it's not really them, that they're just illusions. As it is, though... He's finding it harder and harder to leave the dreamscape behind, when they exist there but not in reality.**

~ ~ ~

 _Arthur gets back from Thailand, from the latest job with Eames and Ariadne, and he throws his jacket against the wall. He can't fucking take this anymore. Ashley's right, he's torturing himself. And Ianto's right, it's time he left the business. He leaves, and that's it. He can just walk away from everything, start again._

 _He hadn't thought he'd ever want to, but it's hardly the first time. It's what he does, isn't it? He runs away, he finds somewhere else but it's never permanent. He doesn't think Cardiff will be either, or maybe it will – Torchwood agents are lucky to live for five years after recruitment, chances are he'll end up in one of the freezer drawers that take up an entire wall of the Cardiff base. He can think of worse ends. At least it would be a clean death, as opposed to limbo._

 _Eames knows about Torchwood, but Arthur remembers that the Torchwood people never got too close to the SAS men, back in the days of the DESI/Torchwood dreamscape program. He might guess but he won't be able to find out. And besides, Arthur's pretty sure Ariadne and Eames would both respect his choice – they still seem to like him, or at least not to dislike him. Presuming that he told them, which he's not going to._

 _He's not telling anyone, not even Cobb. He doesn't talk to Dom much anymore, he doesn't really talk to anyone except his friends from his agent days. Which equals one DESI agent – Assistant Director now – and three Torchwood agents. Really, the writing's been on the wall for some time. He's going back to his old life, and he's not telling anyone from the current one. Let them wonder what happened, he doesn't give a fuck anymore._

~ ~ ~

Cobb's squeamishness, if that's what it was, is gone, to Ariadne's relief. He's solid at her side when they take out the guards in the abandoned factory, all of it over in fifteen minutes. They're the only ones conscious now, and the only other breathing occupants of the room are Arthur and Eames, slumped in folding chairs and hooked up to a PASIV.

The drug putting them under is special, one that causes each dreamer to be in his own world, though they are all on the same level. It creates a world made from fears, from the things you don't want to think about and are terrified will come to pass. If you give in, if you give up and accept that it's never going to be all right again, you lose yourself.

Bullen didn't say if it was limbo, if by giving in you fall into that empty place forever, but she's taking no chances. She's standing closer to Eames so she pushes him over first, but knocks Arthur to the floor as well before Eames even hits the ground.

It seems to take them forever to fall, and all she can do is hold her breath. She's done all she can now; if it's too late for either of them she doesn't know what she'll do.

~ ~ ~

 **Eames has a PASIV, he has the same sedative Yusuf gave them for the Fischer job. He asked his old friend for it not knowing why he wanted it, and even now he's not sure. He knows what he could do, but really, that's just fancy suicide. He has it, and he's toying with an IV line, considering slipping the needle into his vein, but he's not entirely sure he wants to.**

 **He doesn't know what he wants to do at all, about this or anything, but he doesn't get a chance to decide. The room tilts, and Eames frowns, confused. He'd thought he was in reality, he should have known he was... Except he hasn't checked his totem in months. Not since before Ari and Arthur died. He hasn't wanted to; he knows this is reality because no dream could be this fucked up, could it?**

 **Except apparently it is, and he holds his breath, because if this isn't real then maybe...**

~ ~ ~

 _Arthur's made the call to Ianto and he's sliding into a taxi, heading for the airport. His phone was ringing when he walked out of the apartment for the last time – the ID said it was Ariadne. A bitter part of Arthur enjoys the thought of her waiting for the voicemail, of both her and Eames getting more and more impatient waiting for him to call back._

 _It's petty but it's something, and he'll take it. That's what he's thinking when, outside his window, the buildings are suddenly horizontal. What the...? He can't be dreaming, he's just checked his –_

 _Except he hasn't checked his totem. He hasn't checked it since before Ari broke the news to him that his presence in the relationship was no longer wanted. It wasn't a conscious choice, he simply hadn't thought to check. And with that thought and the shock that comes with it, he realizes that he can't possibly know what is real, not if he was so sure this was and it isn't. If this isn't real... Hope hurts like hell but he can't get rid of it as the cab turns on its side and he becomes aware of cold cement..._

~ ~ ~

They come out of it within seconds of each other, struggling to sit up and gasping for air. Ariadne's on her knees in front of them without thinking, grabbing Eames' left hand and Arthur's right. “It was a dream, whatever happened it wasn't real, I swear. I should have been here quicker, I'm sorry.”

They both stare at her for a moment, not saying anything, and then all of them move at once, or maybe one of them pulls both of the other two in, she's not sure. But they're in a rather awkwardly positioned threeway hug, and Eames is muttering something about still being alive, Arthur's shaking and Ariadne's crying, the rigid control she's been holding herself to until now breaking into pieces.

She is vaguely aware of Cobb moving around them, hiding the bodies, and the tiny part of her not focused on her boys and the fact that she has them back and never wants them out of her sight again is grateful for that. But really, it's much more important right now that Eames and Arthur are holding her, and each other, and she's clinging to both of them, and it's all right. It's going to be all right because they're all here, alive and sane. It's all right.


End file.
